The 2008 Annual Meeting and Exposition officially kicks off with a combined informational session hosted by COMMON and IBM starting at 3:30 p.m. COMMON President Randy Dufault will welcome attendees and cover important highlights for the week ahead. During COMMON's Award program, the Speaker Excellence Award winners from the Annual 2007 Meeting in Anaheim will be announced and new this year, IBM will present the 2008 i5/ OS Innovation Awards. Also, as part of the Opening Session in Nashville, we will have Dr. Jurij R. Paraszczak, IBM Research Director Industry Solutions as our keynote speaker. His presentation will speak to how the underlying technology which supports IT has led to ever increasing sophistication of IT's capabilities and where it may migrate to innovate in the future.